Bloody Dawn
by Fictatious
Summary: Serpentine 'Verse, sort-of. The cycle starts with a sunrise, over the blood-soaked streets of Kul'elna, and a single survivor, too young to comprehend where the road set in front of him leads. One-shot.


Screaming. Everywhere there was screaming.

People were running in every direction, hysterical, trying to flee and finding only sharpened bronze blades everywhere they turned. In the confusion and the press of bodies, Bachir had lost his grip on his mother's hand. He was shoved and jostled by panic-stricken people until he couldn't see his mother or father and couldn't hear them calling his name.

There was a sudden burst of fresh screaming and everybody started running in the same direction. Bachir tripped and was nearly trampled but something seemed to push him to the side before a foot could land on him. He righted himself quickly and ran along with the herd until it stopped again, the people behind crashing into the people ahead, as more screams came from the front. Bachir gulped and sobbed and cried for his mother.

_This way._

Bachir looked around frantically. It wasn't his mother, but somebody had called to him, he was sure. He hiccupped and stumbled back as the frightened people around him tried to run in all directions at once.

_This way,_ the voice called again, and this time Bachir could tell what direction it had come from. Maybe it would lead him back to his mother. He started pushing and squirming through the forest of legs, making his way toward the voice that had called him.

_Over here,_ it called and Bachir slipped around the corner of a building. The people down this street were pushing, the tide turning to surge back in the direction Bachir had just come, but he fought against them to follow the voice.

_Down here,_ the voice called from a gap between some large wooden crates that were stacked against an outer wall. Bachir got kicked by some of the knees and feet as he fought his way toward the gap and ducked down inside of it.

The little cave between and under the crates was relatively still. One of the crates would shake now and then as somebody outside bumped into them, but Bachir was no longer being shoved or kicked. "Mommy?" he whimpered, as he came up against the mud-brick wall of the building at the end of his cave. The voice hadn't led him back to his mother.

_Be silent,_ the strange voice instructed and Bachir bit his lip to keep from whining as he squirmed around so that his back was against the wall and he could see the feet running past outside of the cave.

The feet were all going in the same direction now, and the screams were getting louder. They weren't frightened screams anymore, they were screams of pain. Bachir bit his lip harder and balled his hands up in his tunic.

_Don't cry,_ the voice said, and Bachir tried not to.

The screams were right in front of him, and the running feet were suddenly accompanied by sprays of bright red. Some of the feet fell down, and Bachir could see torsos and heads through the mouth of his cave now.

One fell, a woman, and he could see her from about waist to neck, struggling on the ground, trying to push herself back up on her arms, and then a blade came down right into her back and she went down to the ground again, struggling only a moment longer before going still. She wasn't his mother, she was wearing a dress that his mother didn't have. His mother was still okay somewhere.

_Don't cry,_ the voice told him again.

Different feet were in front of his cave now, feet with sandals on them, that marched with a sort of unity and tread right over the top of the villagers, making squelching noises in the blood and not seeming to notice that there was anything strange with the road.

_Don't cry._

Many of the sandaled feet went past, and then after they had, there was stillness outside of the cave again, though Bachir could still hear screaming farther away. The cut and crushed villagers outside the cave were all still and very very red.

_Don't cry._

After a while there were running feet again; not a crowd like before, but one person running here or there, dodging between the motionless villagers who were laying down in the street and running fast, not screaming. After them there would sometimes be the sandaled feet, chasing them and carelessly crunching down on the chests of the villagers.

_Don't cry._

There was a great crash when the roof of the building across the street caved in, its support beams eaten through by fire. The screams were no longer constant, and the longer Bachir crouched in the back of his cave, the longer it seemed to be between distant screams. Soon the sounds of fires were louder than the sounds of terrified people.

_Don't cry._

Eventually Bachir couldn't hear anything but fire. After what seemed like a very long time, the sandaled feet were back. The hands that belonged to them were reaching down, grabbing the motionless villagers in front of the cave and hoisting them into carts. One cart would rattle off down the road that must have been cleared in that direction, and another would be in its place, ready to carry more villagers away to wherever it was the sandaled feet were taking them.

_Don't cry._

Soon there wasn't anybody outside of the cave. The ground was smeared all over with dark red mud and the undulating firelight cast strange shadows in it. On the wall straight across from Bachir's cave, there was a dark arch of spotted red, recording someone's journey to the ground.

_Don't cry._

A long, long time passed as Bachir sat, squished up against the mud-bricks and crates, his hands twisted up in the skirt of his tunic and his teeth digging into his lip. He shook the entire time, as though he was cold, even though he wasn't; the spreading fires were counteracting the chill of nighttime. Bachir stayed where he was, as the voice told him to, and stayed silent, as the voice told him to.

As the hours came and went, even the sounds of the fires started to fade, though the usual sounds of the desert at night did not return. Bachir couldn't hear any beetles in the scrubs or night-birds in the trees. The toads that had been singing for the past few weeks were absent. Bachir wondered if the two toads he had in a pot at home, that his father had helped him catch, were silent too.

In the waning flicker of the fires, the street outside of the cave had become very dark. Bachir was sure that it was much later than he had ever stayed awake before. After it had been quiet for a long time, the darkness outside of the cave started to lift again, as the sky grew gray, and finally the voice gave him a new instruction.

_Go outside now. I'll guide you to somewhere safe,_ it promised.

Bachir hesitated for a moment and then crawled toward the mouth of the cave. The dirt under his hands and knees became damp and sticky as he reached the end and cautiously immerged. "Do you know where Mommy is?" Bachir whispered, barely making any sound at all.

_Your mother is dead, along with all the others,_ the voice answered.

Bachir whimpered.

_All you can do for her now is crush the people who did this. Your mother and father want you to avenge them. I will help you, but you must do as I say,_ the voice said. _Come this way._

Bachir turned to his left and started taking shaky steps through the dark red mud. The voice kept calling him onward, tugging him around a bend here and there, and pulling him gently through the empty, muddy streets as the sky grew lighter. After he'd walked several blocks, as Bachir noticed they were coming to the edge of the village, he started to hear other voices. These ones weren't screaming or begging or calling out to God; they were conversing in normal tones, having a perfectly mundane conversation.

_This way,_ the voice urged him, and Bachir turned the corner. Ahead of him, standing in the street with a casual air, were three sandaled men, wearing short kilts and head-wraps and holding poles with large, bronze blades on the ends. One of them was leaning against a cart with two horses tied to it. It was entirely different from any of the carts or plows Bachir had seen horses pulling before. _Keep walking,_ the voice ordered.

Bachir kept moving his feet, one in front of the other, automatically, and feeling like he couldn't have stopped walking if he'd tried. Doing what the voice told him was less terrifying than not knowing what to do, even if it was leading him towards the bad men.

As he got close to them, the men finally noticed him and turned to face him, one of them grabbing his spear and holding it at the right level to stab downwards into Bachir if he were a little closer.

"It's just a child," one of the men said, sounding doubtful.

"It's a child of vermin. Lord Aknadin ordered us to kill every one of them," the man holding the spear retorted in a cold voice.

_Keep moving,_ the voice told Bachir and so he did, drawing closer to the men.

"Stupid animal," the third man laughed. "What does it think it's doing?"

When Bachir was almost within range of the men's spears, he felt something burst out of him, like a great arm reaching out and coming down on the closest man and then whipping around and tearing through the other two. The men all fell down and lay as motionless as the villagers had, even though there wasn't any new blood on them.

Bachir stared at them. He could feel the something that came out of him seem to wrap back around him like a blanket that wasn't warm. _The horses,_ the voice said, and Bachir looked up to the horses. They were dancing nervously away from the fallen men, making upset sounds, but seemed unable to agree on a direction to run in, so they couldn't get away from each other or the cart. _Go to them._

Bachir fidgeted with the hem of his tunic and looked around. He cautiously inched toward the horses. They made more upset noises and danced around, pulling in both directions. "Be good, horsie," Bachir whispered, carefully reaching up and patting the shoulder of one of the horses. It seemed to calm down a bit and became quieter, just stamping its feet a little, and that made the other one quiet as well.

The harness tying them to the cart fell apart then, and the horses pulled out of it. One of them cantered away down the street and the other one moved just a short distance and then waited, looking around. _Get on the horse,_ the voice instructed, and so Bachir walked over to where the one that had stayed was and looked at it doubtfully. And then, something caught hold of Bachir, pulling him high into the air, and somehow, impossibly, he landed astride the horses back. The horse danced around nervously again and snorted in distress.

Bachir grabbed handfuls of the horses mane, shaking and feeling very precarious. As he looked to the side, he saw the reins pulling themselves off the ground and lifting toward him. They snapped halfway up, the long ends falling limply to the ground and the new ends knotting themselves and continuing to ascend to Bachir's level. _Take the reins._

He gingerly reached out and closed his hand around the reins, keeping the other one firmly fisted in the horse's mane. The horse suddenly jolted forward and started trotting after Bachir had the reins, and he stifled as shriek, leaning forward against its neck, clinging tightly. The last few broken houses flew past and then the horse was running through the fields outside of town. Bachir squeezed his eyes shut and whimpered.

After a few minutes the horse stopped abruptly, making an irritated noise. _Sit up,_ the voice said and Bachir cracked an eye open, but didn't sit back up until the voice repeated, _Sit up._ He shakily pushed himself up, biting his lip and trying not to look down at how far below him the ground was. _Turn around,_ the voice told him and Bachir gingerly turned, not letting go of the horse's mane, and looked back at the village.

Behind the broken, smoldering houses, the horizon was light. _Look where the sun is just about to rise,_ the voice said. _That is our battlefield. That is where we will conquer Ra and his people. That is where you will have your revenge, my little Bakhura._

Bachir was silent for a few a little while, staring at the sky and not understanding. "Ba-Bakhura?" he whispered.

_That is your name from this moment on,_ the voice told him. _That is the name of our champion, the champion of his lost people, who will bring all of Kemet to its knees. The Pharaoh has destroyed your people, but one day, he will kneel before you to beg for your mercy. And you will give him none._

...

...

A/N: Oh look, it's a little one-shot I wrote! Eesh, I am having such a hard time with finishing up FE, I think I've kind of written myself into a corner... I may end scrapping a lot of what I've already written for chapter six and redoing it, because I'm just not... finding a way out of it right now... But I really liked the rant I wrote in it... I don't know... It's just giving me troubles.

So anyway, this piece here can work for Serpentine, but it doesn't really have to, I see it as a good start-thing in general, whether the voice talking to Bakhura here is Sek or Apep; and I'm placing Bakhura at five-years-old here, which seems to be the generally agreed-upon age for him during Kul'elna, but, y'know, since kids in Yugioh look exactly the same between the ages of five and ten, it's kind of hard to tell... And Set looks like he's supposed to be about the same age at the time, but in the flashbacks he seems to be retarded or something... does not notice people talking about him _right_ in front of him, just stands there, staring blankly, although his clothing would indicate that he's at least five or six... Anyway, the general ambiguity of ages in Yugioh aside (is Kaiba _really_ supposed to be 15?) here's some beginning of the tragedy-cycle fic for you. I'm still plugging away at FE, but it is being a bitch and talking back. I think it said something about my mother the last time I tried to kick it around. Stupid fic-bitch...


End file.
